By David Crystal

New from Cambridge University Press!

By Peter Mark Roget

This book "supplies a vocabulary of English words and idiomatic phrases 'arranged … according to the ideas which they express'. The thesaurus, continually expanded and updated, has always remained in print, but this reissued first edition shows the impressive breadth of Roget's own knowledge and interests."

SUMMARYThe book “Growing up with two languages” is a guide for parents raisingbilingual children, the third edition of a book originally published in 1999. Ittreats various aspects of life with two languages and two cultures. The changesthat have been introduced in comparison with the second edition include twocompletely new chapters: “Looking back on a bilingual childhood” and “Researchand further reading”. The former takes the form of case studies which look atten different bilingual families from Europe, Africa and Asia, and cover thetime span of fifty years. The latter provides an overview of studies onchildhood bilingualism and suggestions for further reading.

The book is structured as follows. The Preface provides information concerningthe author’s personal experiences with bilingualism as well as changes in thethird edition of the book. In Chapter One, “Families with two languages”,different types of bilingual families are identified. The following chapters,from Chapter Two to Chapter Five, explore particular stages of growing up withtwo languages: expecting a child in a bilingual home, developing a familylanguage system after the child is born and the child’s language development.While initially the discussion focuses on children, in Chapters Six-Nine itshifts to parents raising bilingual children, and deals with such issues as theparents’ expectations regarding the level of competence of bilingual childrenand various problems involved in bringing up bilingual children. In Chapter Ten,“Looking back on a bilingual childhood”, bilinguals share their experiences ofliving in a bilingual family. In Chapter Eleven suggestions for further readingare provided. The book includes three appendices, a glossary, a subject indexand a bibliography.

Chapter One, “Families with two languages”, covers different types of bilingualfamilies and the day-to-day problems they face. The author distinguishes betweenmixed language families and minority language families. For mixed languagefamilies, where parents do not have a common linguistic and cultural background,adapting to a new situation may pose a considerable challenge. Although at thebeginning the minority language speaker may make mistakes while communicating,eventually he or she tends to gain language skills in the majority language. Anadditional difficulty arises when children appear, as they have to beaccommodated in their parents’ linguistic arrangements. If parents choose toexpose their children to both languages a new challenge may arise, namely, atsome point children may refuse to speak the minority language in public becauseit leaves them with the feeling of being “an outsider” in their own country. Incontrast, Cunningham argues that members of minority language families whereboth parents speak a minority language are in a more favorable situation as theparents share both a linguistic and cultural background. Their patterns oflanguage use are affected by the degree of integration into the community andprospects regarding return to the home country.

Chapter Two, “Expecting a child in a bilingual home”, discusses the issue ofestablishing a code of language use within a family before the birth of a child.Cunningham points out that when a bilingual family expects a child the parentshave to take into account the child’s linguistic development when making plans.For example, they have to decide whether they want their child to be able tospeak a minority language in order to communicate with relatives from their homecountry. The parents may also consider their child’s ability to speak twolanguages an asset in career terms. In addition, Cunningham focuses on parentalexpectations regarding the level of competence of their children. She notes thatraising children to be indistinguishable from monolingual speakers of eitherlanguage appears to be unrealistic.

Chapter Three, “The family language system”, discusses two models ofcommunication that may be used within bilingual families: “one person-onelanguage” and “one language-one location”. Cunningham exposes major shortcomingsof the “one person-one language” approach. For example, children may avoidcontact with a parent who speaks their weaker language, and they may alsoreceive too little input in a minority language. In contrast, in the “onelanguage-one location” approach children receive a substantial input in aminority language at home, and are usually highly motivated to learn a majoritylanguage outside the home to communicate with their friends. While some puristsmay reject the idea of parents speaking anything other than their nativelanguage to children, Cunningham argues that children also benefit fromnon-native input.

Chapter Four, “Language development”, explores different stages of languagelearning, ranging from recognizing different sounds and producing words inisolation, to building children’s linguistic awareness. Cunningham argues thatparents should have great sensitivity to a child’s linguistic development andshould be consistent in their language use to help their child distinguishbetween languages. The author points out that different languages may bedominant at different times and language mixing is a natural characteristic ofbilingual development.

Chapter Five, “The child with two languages”, focuses on the advantages anddisadvantages of growing up with two languages. Cunningham stresses that, on theone hand, it is a unique opportunity for a child to learn two languages at homefrom the parents; on the other hand, being bilingual is a challenge thatrequires hard work and commitment. Various difficulties may arise depending onthe age of a child and the circumstances. For example, younger speakers may haveproblems with distinguishing between two different sound systems and learningequivalent words, whereas older children who move abroad may lose a year or twoin order to catch up before they develop majority language skills. In addition,bilingual children may suffer if education standards happen to be inappropriate.

Chapter Six, “Practical parenting in a bilingual home”, investigates thedecisive role of parents in raising bilingual children. Cunningham offerspractical advice to parents about seeking support in the community, encouragingchildren to interact with other children who speak a minority language, as wellas using age-appropriate learning materials. The author argues that providinginput in a minority language is as important as giving a child a chance to respond.

Chapter Seven, “Competence in two cultures”, explores the notion ofbiculturalism. Cunningham points out that the decision about exposing childrento two cultures is not as straightforward as the decision regarding languagechoice. According to Cunningham while children may acquire a language whereverthey are by simply being exposed to it, they cannot become integrated into aculture without the support of the community.

Chapter Eight, “Problems you may encounter”, presents two types of problems thatparents may be faced with while raising a bilingual child. First, people wholive abroad may find that their language skills in the native language havedeteriorated in comparison with the skills they had in their home country. Alanguage strategy may also be disrupted by unexpected occurrences, such asdivorce, death of a parent and bringing up children with disabilities.

Chapter Nine, “Keeping it up”, focuses on the maintenance of previous linguisticstrategies. Cunningham stresses the importance of motivation and systematic workin language learning as well as the positive effect of knowing a minoritylanguage for a child’s future career.

Chapter Ten, “Looking back on a bilingual childhood”, provides ten unique casestudies in which people who grew up with two languages as children share theirexperiences. Most case studies are based on Indo-European languages, while twoinvolve languages from other language families, i.e. Igbo (Niger-Congo) andTurkish (Altaic). In addition, Cunningham describes the lives of her fourchildren brought up in a bilingual home.

Chapter Eleven, “Research and further reading”, focuses on bilingualismresearch. Cunningham discusses studies dealing with children’s bilinguallanguage development and bilingual language acquisition, and suggests directionsfor further reading.

The book concludes with three appendices offering advice about organizing aworkshop devoted to raising bilingual children, as well as supporting anddocumenting children’s bilingual development. The book is accompanied by acompanion website which provides excerpts from interviews and information aboutthe author (http://cw.routledge.com/textbooks/9780415598521/).

EVALUATION“Growing up with two languages” is an extensive survey of the lives of membersof bilingual families who experienced benefits and faced risks as a result ofliving with two languages and two cultures on a daily basis. The book discussesdifficulties involved in bringing up a bilingual child, but it also offerspractical advice how to overcome them.

The book is primarily aimed at parents who raise bilingual children andprofessionals who work with them, such as teachers and educationalists. As ittakes a practical approach to the bilingual families, it includes few referencesto theories of bilingualism. The book is accessible to readers without abackground in linguistics, and provides a glossary of key terms. The book iswritten in a clear style. The chapters are illustrated with examples placed ingrey boxes and individual contributions from members of bilingual families inblock quotations.

One of the book’s greatest advantages is that it explores virtually all aspectsof living with two languages. It considers issues connected with bilingualismfrom the perspective of both parents and children, and also describes bilingualfamilies in relation to other people who interact with them. The book coversalmost all domains of language use, such as family, friendship, religion,education and employment. In addition, it examines situations that occur on aregular basis, such as bilingual education at school, and unexpectedoccurrences, such as the divorce of the parents and the resulting restriction inthe input in one of the languages. In addition, it provides real-life examplesdrawn from a variety of languages.

The book has limitations, though. It focuses on families in which either one ofthe parents speaks the dominant language of the community and the other speaksthe minority language, or those in which both parents have the same linguisticbackground, speak the minority language and live outside their home country. Itthus fails to adequately account for other types of bilingual families withinthe typology by Döpke (1992), i.e. families in which parents have differentfirst languages, both of which are minority languages. While it is sometimespossible to generalize from the examples provided to wider contexts, members ofsuch families would benefit from more detailed discussion of the issues theyface on a daily basis. Moreover, the book does not treat families in which thereis only one parent. In addition, the book’s coverage is unbalanced, with alllinguistic examples from either English or Swedish, while examples of culturalcontexts are drawn from a wide variety of languages.

Structurally, there is some repetition. For example, the issue of publicperception of bilingual families speaking a minority language on the street isdiscussed not only in the section “Be prepared!” in Chapter Two, but also in thesections “Language switching” in Chapter One and “Being different” in ChapterFive. On the formal side, there are occasional misprints in linguistic examplesfrom Swedish, i.e.: blåbar (blåbär) (p. 5), klattra (klättra) (p. 5), dar (där)(p. 36); gor (gör) (p. 58); snogubbe (snögubbe) (p. 59), manen (månen) (p. 59).

On the whole, “Growing up with two languages” provides a useful resource forparents of bilingual families who want to bring up their children bilingually.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER:
Karolina Dobersztyn is an MA student of English at Adam Mickiewicz
University, Poznan, Poland. Her research interest centers on contact
linguistics. She is currently working on patterns of language use of
members of bilingual families in the United States. She relates language
choices of bilingual speakers to the processes of language maintenance and
shift.